I am someone who struggles with feelings of disconnection. It has been scary as a mother to really see clearly how unattached I can feel. It is a feeling I hate and a feeling I recognize, because I saw and experienced all levels of disconnect in and from my own parents. Since having children however I have experienced what I call relentless love.
Babies are born with this deep desire to be bonded and to the one they have grown in. They want to be with their mothers all the time. They want to smell her, feel her and hear her. They experience frantic panic when and if their need is not met right away by her because they actually dont know they are not her. For a long time they still feel a part of her and do not know they are themselves a separate person. As their mother responds and nurtures their treasure, this attachment that they need brings them to life. If a child is adopted, or has to spend time in the NICU, or is not able to, for some reason, have the natural bonding time with their mother; many times a sort of damage occurs. Children in orphanages are the perfect example of this. A part of themselves is lost and it creates a void that words cannot explain. I have seen this in my own child who is adopted and in my bio children who suffer as a result of my inability for healthy attachment. Children are precious. They need to feel that preciousness. If they lose it they lose themselves.
As they get older your babies still want you just as much but in different ways. They want your eye contact, your soft touch, hugs and kind words, they just want you to love them. They ask in many many ways, shapes and forms. If they are turned down enough times you see a child on varying levels of emotional death. Now as an adult I realize the wanting and asking never stops. Your mother is always your mother and your father is always your father. You are always their child and the want and wish for love never leaves you. The want and need for connection never leaves you. That means that the pain that results if those needs aren't met is the deepest kind. As humans we can only handle so much emotional rejection. I think each human has a different thresh hold. Some children are such fighters and such survivors that their whining, crying and literal screaming for connection is relentless. Some are much more resigned to their fate. I remember how my sisters were such fighters. I remember realizing and being in awe of their spirits. They screamed for attention and connection. I sat back and quietly gave up in a sense. Neither approach is a winner and both leaves you vulnerable and abuse is almost a guarantee.
Relentless love. My children ask for love each moment of each day. All of humanity each moment of each day is crying out for love.
Coming from a family that had a lack of attachment when I was little I would observe families that were healthily attached. At the time I didn't fully understand what the difference was. I actually only knew one or two families that had this sort of attachment and I loved to be around them. I felt a sense of safety and peace.
I think that is one of the most beautiful things about attachment. You feel a sense of peace and you feel safe. You KNOW that no matter how far away you go and no matter what happens there is someone out in the world who loves YOU, who knows YOU and who thinks YOU are precious. It is like there is an invisible cord connecting your hearts that is never broken no matter how far away you go. When people dont have that connection with anyone they are free falling, always grasping desperately, trying to find it.
All of this I have come to realize after experiencing the relentless love of my children. I found I couldn't handle their love, their needs, their little souls needing to connect with mine. I had long ago turned my souls eyes down, had shut off my spirit, and I needed to try to break down walls, unbar doors, open windows and look up again. I felt like I had to come back into myself. It was such an unnerving realization and one that broke my heart. I had to look back and realize what I had missed as a child in order to be able to look forward.
I have found that attachment issues are usually generational. There is a long line of broken hearts. No parent sets out to purposely not connect and bond with their children. They do their best with what is given. However instead of the relentless love of their children being a wooing call it is an assault.They were not given their own preciousness and therefore they dont have any to give. When someone is able to rise above this and break a long line of pain...it is nothing short of a miracle. It is a delicate flower growing out of the side of a cliff face. It is beauty rising from ashes.
I am so thankful for this journey I am on. I often feel totally blown out of the water and far from qualified.Yet I am called. When I take the time to smile into the shining eyes of one of my children, listen to their story, give them a hug that lasts a long time, breath deep and feel their heart beat, when I laugh with them or comfort them through heart break..I know its right. I've found that more and more the feeling is becoming natural. Their relentless love is just that ~ relentless~
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